May 7th, 2007
3D Printers for the Home Coming “Soon”?
By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
One of my favorite shows of all time is Star Trek: The Next Generation (Oh, and BTW, I also liked Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, despite all the naysayers). Besides cruising around the universe in a Galaxy-class starship, who wouldn’t love walking up to a replicator and asking for “Earl Grey”. Well, this isn’t quite the same, but it’s pretty cool.
Sometimes a particular piece of plastic is just what you need. You have lost the battery cover to your cell phone, perhaps. Or your daughter needs to have the golden princess doll she saw on television. Now.
In a few years, it will be possible to make these items yourself. You will be able to download three-dimensional plans online, then push Print. Hours later, a solid object will be ready to remove from your printer. Source: Chron.com
We Say: While 3D printers are not new (they have been used in industrial design shops for about a decade), price points which might (yeah, $4995 is still outta reach for most) be affordable for the home … that is new. Originally prices started around $100K and now they are available for $15K.
Note: The writer of the article says “It’s not quite the transporter of Star Trek, but it is a step closer”. I have to correct him (and thereby, show my geekiness). Although replicators and transporters are based on the same technology … it is a replicator and not a transporter you are thinking of. 
Billy Kess says:
Will it allow me to ‘print’ a copy of Paris Hilton?
May 8th, 2007 at 3:17 am
dogger says:
im guessing its like a block of some soft material that gets shaved away to make a modle.
i highly doubt that you could make anything with moving parts unless you made seperate objects and connected them.
it will probably make alot of mess as well.
May 8th, 2007 at 5:38 am
Jim says:
Will it allow me to ‘print’ a copy of Paris Hilton?
I’m sure lumpy plastic toothpicks aren’t beyond its capability…
May 8th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Matthew says:
Starting out with a hard piece of plastic and shaving it away would be to costly and would not allow you to make hollow objects.
A while back they aired a show going into the industrial versions of this machine and it starts out with a liquid silcone like plastic that hardens quickly, or another one I heard about was more of a heat hardening process by a laser. But which ever comes first is fine with me as long as it works.
May 8th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
John says:
Is this story talking about fab@home ? where you can buy a ‘fabber’ and make things out of it there’s even a wiki for them.
May 8th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
LZW says:
They had these in the mid 90’s but they costed a small fortune!!! (I read about them in computer magazine before I even owned a computer)
Now they are cheap enough for CAD professionals. (and that’s what they do) You put in you goo, laser beams strike strike it and out comes your plastic gears or whatever cad drawing you had.
On another site, they featured the $4,995 model which can make 5″x5″x5″ objects so readers were posting comments like the paris hilton one and others were laughing about the usefulness of a 5″ sex toy doll.
One person did have a good idea of “no more washing the dishes” just print new ones!!!
Yet 5″ could still be considered small for a plate and it costs $0.50 a cubic inch!
May 8th, 2007 at 6:28 pm